


Agape

by DawnMalfoy



Series: Yuri on Ice!!! Stories [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Agape, Angst, Character Study, Comfort, Confusion, Eros - Freeform, Eventual Fluff, Falling In Love, Fluff, Introspection, Light Angst, Love, M/M, Mild Smut, Points of View, Slow Build, Slow Burn, former playboy victor, learning to love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-01 01:49:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8602474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnMalfoy/pseuds/DawnMalfoy
Summary: Victor has always been selfish. Coaching Yuuri is just another selfish decision, made so that he can retire while still shocking the world. Yuuri becomes his Eros, the focus of his desires. His desires to shock and his sexual desires all rolled into one Japanese skater. What he doesn't expect is that the same boy will teach him the meaning of agape.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Just quickly, this story is currently unedited because I'm quite unwell and I'm going on vacation!

The thing about Yuuri is that he is the first person who has ever completely rejected Victor. It’s not something he’s used to. The fans around him flock to him, willing to bend to his every desire just to make their idol smile. Yakov bends to his will because he’s seen first hand that Victor will pull off something brilliant if left to his own devices. His teammates let him get away with doing whatever he wishes in order to get time with him, so that he can help them train and perform at a new level. Victor isn’t used to the word no, although he does occasionally hear it. Normally it is from his coach’s harsh ex-wife when he is doing ballet and begs to stop for a drink. Less often he hears it from Yakov in relation to specific foods that he desires to eat, which fall out of his strict training diet. 

 

So it’s not as though he hasn’t experienced rejection at all. 

 

It’s that Yuuri Katsuki doesn’t just reject him. 

 

He flat out ignores him. 

 

Victor’s never had anyone look directly at him and turn away from him until Yuuri does it. It shocks his system. Jolts him out of the land of clouds that he’s resided in for so long and drags him down the ground, where he can hear the whispers about his age and about just how long he can keep competing at an international level. He doesn’t tell anyone about it, but late at night he tosses and turns in his bed with an ache in his hip and lower back that just don’t seem to want to go away. He’s beginning to notice the toll that skating is taking on him. He’s beginning to feel the strain of the quads he’s so famous for and it’s taking him longer to get up when he occasionally falls. 

 

He wants to blame the Japanese skater who had been distracting him since he left the grand prix, but he can’t because it isn’t really his fault. He’d begun to notice it long before he’d been rejected. Noticed that it was becoming harder and harder to find music and more and more difficult to come up with surprising choreography that didn’t push his body too far beyond it’s quickly contracting limits. So really he can’t blame the Japanese boy for simply slightly accelerating an already ongoing process.

 

It’s on a night where he’s laying on the couch listlessly, twisting and turning to try and find a position that doesn’t aggravate his aching joints that the video of Yuuri skating makes it way to his phone. Victor’s never really been a fan of scouting out the competition. He loves that element of surprise too. Loves seeing how much the other skaters around him have changed in the off season. With that in mind, he fully intends to ignore the video that hundreds of fans are mentioning him in. He’s bored though, and he needs something to take his mind off the ominous throbbing in his ankle so he decides to view it.  

 

The performance is far from perfect, but it doesn’t matter that the boy fails to copy all of his quads because with every passing seconds he bends the music and makes it his own. Shifting it and changing it until Victor feels as though neither the routine nor the music could ever have belonged to him at all. Katsuki Yuuri takes them from him in the same way he’d stolen all of his focus and suddenly Victor is able to make up his mind about what’s next. 

 

* * *

 

He has his doubts of course. A massive part of him wants to turn back the second he steps through the gate at the airport in Russia. He’s never done anything but skate before. He doesn’t know the first thing about being a coach. Part of him questions whether if Yakov had made more of an effort to understand his frustrations he’d still be skating. A larger part focuses on Yuuri and on the routines that he has dreamt of for him.  He’s scared he’s going to fail but at this point he can’t go back. Yakov is pissed and so is he rest of his team. He’s got nothing left for him in Russia. 

 

His body is enjoying the extended rest more than he anticipated as well. His back feels better and his knee has stopped making that bizarre cracking sound that it used to everytime he got up. Victor would never admit that he was retiring, but deep within himself he knows that he’s never going to be able to be a competitive skater again. It breaks him a little knowing that his prime is over and realising that he needs to step to the side so that others can take his place in the spotlight. After all, Yakov is not wrong in calling him selfish. Victor wants to be the centre of attention, the start, the prima ballerina that they built him up to be. He’s never been out of the limelight. 

 

So Yakov is right about his decision to coach Yuuri. It’s entirely selfish. A move made because it’s the only shocking way for him to bow out of his career. It’s selfish because Victor wants to use Yuuri to complete the routines that he choreographed the are far out of his reach with his aging limbs. It’s selfish because he wants to make sure that Yuuri never rejects him again. 

 

His eyes slide shut somewhere in the middle of the flight and don’t open again until everyone has exited the plane.

 

* * *

 

 

When Victor steps into the small, sleepy town of Hatsetsu his heart swells with the feeling of finally being home. It’s odd, the warmth that fills his limbs as he strolls from the train station to the taxi rank. Hatsetsu is nothing like Russia. In many ways, they’re exact opposites. In his heart though Russia has long stopped being his home. It’s the home of Victor the world’s top figure skater, but it is most definitely not the home of Victor the person. 

 

Yuuri is refusing to come out of his room when he arrives, but that’s just fine. He’s tired from the flight and he doesn’t think he’s ready to face Yuuri. He’s never felt nervous about meeting someone before, but the thought of meeting Yuuri has his heart pounding in his chest in the same way that it used to before he got on the ice to skate. It’s a feeling he’s missed a lot. One that he hasn’t felt in years, since he lost his element of surprise. 

 

The family who own the hotsprings are lovely. Yuuri’s mother smiles and demands that he sits down to eat. He’s slightly surprised at how they know his name, and at the fact that they already have a nickname for him. They don’t ask questions about why he’s there, or about why he’s given up on skating. They just smile and feed him before sending him off to the… he believes the Japanese word is Onsen? It’s lovely though, warming through his joints. It’s been so long since he had time to relax in a warm bath. The outdoor setting is so relaxing as well. 

 

Yuuri appears suddenly, in a hurry that disturbs the tranquility and Victor doesn’t know why he didn’t expect it. The boy always seems to appear in moments where Victor’s life has stagnated and this is no exception to the rule. He stands, disregarding his nakedness for the time being because this is Yuuri and he has no time to waste if he wants to begin to understand him and how he skates. 

 

He’s adorable in real life. Soft around the edges, with a chubby little belly that Victor just wants to poke and caress because he hasn’t felt skin that is not over taught with toned muscle in so, so very long. He’s got an adorable flush on his cheeks and Victor finds himself enamoured with the bashful innocence that he seems to exude. 

 

He still has time to back out of this. 

 

Still has time to be unselfish for the first time in his life. He could pretend that he was here on vacation. Act as though he didn’t plan to live vicariously through Yuuri, who seems to be able to make the music his in ways Victor had spent years trying to attain. He could say that he was just taking a break from being a professional athlete for a week or two and just get to know Yuuri. 

 

But Victor is selfish and wants to continue to stand in the limelight. 

 

“W-why are you here?” 

 

There’s still time. 

 

“Yuuri. Starting today, I’m your coach. I’ll make you win the Grand Prix final” he adds a cheesy wink for good measure, but he also feels as though he is sealing his fate.

 

* * *

 

Japan is beautiful Victor thinks to himself as he rides his bike. It’s not like Russia, where the towns are grey and old and overbearing. Here the houses are coloured with dashes of elegant reds and inviting pastel pinks that make his heart flutter. It’s been so long since Victor has seen beauty in the world around him. He wants to skate. Has done since he touched down really. It’s easy for him to say that that he’s not skating for a season, but it’s harder to pull off than he expected. 

 

He may have banned Yuuri from the ice until he loses all the weight he put on due to stress eating, but Victor is selfish and makes the boy endure watching him skate through programs he’d been toying with for the next season. It’s unfair to the boy. But Victor can’t give up skating and they have so little time to get to know each other before Victor needs to start helping him choreograph a routine. Still, the ice calls to him. Whispers gently to him in his sleep and begs him to go to it and Victor is weak to it’s cries. So he skates while he makes Yuuri do exercises outside the rink. 

 

Yuuri does it too. Yuuri doesn’t reject a single thing he asks of him, not even the order to give up eating the pork cutlet bowls which he loves so much. Victor isn’t sure if he likes it. Part of Yuuri’s unique charm was his rejection of Victor at the Grand Prix finals. 

 

It doesn’t matter though. He’s committed to this now. Yakov already told him that choosing to coach was the end of his career and despite everything, Victor trusts his former coach’s judgement. He knows that his career is done for. So even if Yuuri is somewhat different to the person he thought he was, he’ll just have to endure. 

 

After all, it isn’t as though he is able to find a new muse to inspire him this close to the beginning of the season. 

 

He’s been careful not to tip anyone off to his actual location in Japan. It’s been hard not to upload photos when everything around him is stunning, but it will be harder to deal with the fans and media circus that will arrive should he tip anyone off. 

 

Yuuri is sweet. Guiding him around the small town and showing him the unique attractions that used to draw tourists into Hatsetsu. He’s mysterious as well. Victor isn’t sure about anything to do with him and it’s driving him insane trying to unravel him. He doesn’t give up though because he isn’t a quitter and he wants to try and get to the bottom of why his heart flutters at the sight of Yuuri working so hard to be able to be allowed onto the ice again. 

 

He lets himself be the Victor that he constructed for the press so long ago, sliding into the role as easily as he used to slide into his skates. He’s upbeat and smiley and Yuuri responds to it and they make progress. They leap forwards under the regime, Yuuri shedding weight so quickly that Victor begins to question whether the regime he has put the younger boy on is healthy. He’s caught himself staring fondly more than once and although he isn’t a stranger to feeling attraction to the same gender, this is a form of it he has never felt before. 

 

Everything is more complicated than he expected it would be and he isn’t sure whether he loathes or loves the challenge of it.

 

* * *

 

 

When he finally convinces Yuuri to open up to him it’s a gorgeously sunny day that makes Yuuri’s newly defined jawbones look absolutely stunning. They’re sitting on the bench that Yuuri usually uses for jumping exercises and Victor’s heart is throbbing in his chest from watching the droplet of sweat sliding down from Yuuri’s forehead to his his neck. He want’s to look lower. Follow their trail down Yuuri’s neck to where the sweat pools in his collarbones, but there is more important issues on hand. 

 

“Do you have a girlfriend?” He asks and then begins to pray that the answer is no. 

 

“N-n-no…” Yuuri is adorable when he’s shy. All flushed cheeks and stutters that make Victor want to pin him down until he breaks through the shield of his innocence. 

 

“Ex-girlfriends?” 

 

“N-n-o comment” Victor’s mind begins to wander at the words. It isn’t a rejection of having past lovers, but it seems to be a rejection of the notion that he has had female lovers in the past. Is he asking the wrong questions? Perhaps Yuuri is taken by someone already, a man who looks out for him in all the ways that Victor would be unable to do. 

 

“A crush? Someone you like?” he was quiet for too long. Yuuri’s hands come up to cover his face and Victor knows that the moment is gone and with it so is a piece of Victor’s heart. He very rarely loves anything. The love he had for his parents ended up in tatters and then he’d put every ounce of the affection into skating with skill that would shock the world. Now though, he can feel it bleeding into his chest from the small tear that Yuuri seems to have opened. 

 

“Yuuri, what’s that castle?” he asks and his chest gets a little tighter when Yuuri gives him a tiny smile. 

 

“That’s Hatsetsu castle… it’s not really a castle though. Inside it is a ninja house” Victor’s english almost fails him as he watches Yuuri play with his fingers in shyness about his home town’s eccentricity. 

 

“Wow! Ninjas! Yuuri let’s take a commemorative photo okay?” and before he has time to think he’s rushing off to take a photo and post it online. Later that night he asks himself what could have caused him to be so careless. It answers him with a mirage of Yuuri’s smile and pink cheeks that has him groaning. 

  
  


Just what has he gotten himself into?

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up the early the next morning to help Yuuri train he expects the media circus that awaits him. Just because he expects it doesn’t mean he’s prepared for it though. He’d woken up looking forward to a day full of helping Yuuri train off some of the more stubborn weight. It was a good morning as well. Nothing had gone wrong. Maccachin had even decided to stay and sleep with him rather than abandoning him for Yuuri. 

 

The media reminds him of why he ran. He gets to the door and wants to turn and flee. The bright flashes, the yells, the fangirls screaming and begging for his signature. Yuuri is shaking by his side, unused to all of the attention and Victor feels a little like crying. It had been such a great morning. Yuuri had weighed in and was finally at his pre-Grand Prix weight. The hot spring’s common dining area was empty and quiet for once. 

 

Yuuri had come out of his shell the tiniest bit and hugged him, all lithe toned muscle and warm skin the moment he had gotten off the scale. Victor is no stranger to desire, the feeling that had shot through him as his shirtless protege had embraced him in joy. 

 

He gets over the press. Smiles, gives a few overly sweet answers that seem to placate the vast majority of them. The stubborn ones are forced to run behind them as they carry out their normal routine. Most of them drop out a quarter of the way through Yuuri’s run and by the time they’re inside the rink, Yuuri’s friends are managing the security of the area. Victor had ridden ahead with the excuse that he would attract the most of the press so that Yuuri would be able to focus and was surprised to find that they words carried a slight truth in them.

 

While most of his reason for going ahead was to have the rink to himself so he could skate and calm his thoughts, part of him went ahead so that he could protect Yuuri. 

 

It’s a surprise to himself. The feeling of wanting to protect someone else.

 

* * *

 

When Yuri Plisetski arrives,  he brings with him some things which Victor would rather have left in Russia. He brings the frustrating demands of Yakov back in the way that he forces Victor to choreograph a program for him. He brings a reminder of the Victor who the Russian skating team knew, the cold but flirtatious man who Victor had been so determined to leave behind. He brings homesickness with his strongly accented English when he talks to Yuuri and with his occasional curses in Russian. He brings back the coldness that Victor associated with skating in Russia. The memories of being technically beautiful but unable to connect to the music. 

 

Yuri reminds him of the younger version of himself, thin, androgynous, angry at the world for underestimating his skating abilities just because he isn’t a senior just yet.

 

Yuuri becomes different with the other boy being around. He becomes slightly more confident. Less willing to bend to the opinions and desires of others. It’s as though Yuri lights a fire in his stomach and Yuuri can’t decide whether to be happy for him or whether to be jealous that it was some fifteen year old brat who held onto a promise made too long ago who inspired it. He isn’t sure where the jealousy comes from. He doesn’t like the feeling. It’s bitter and hot in his chest. Makes him feel ill when he sees Yuuri talking to Yuri. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, the one that’s calling for him to gather Yuuri into his arms and hide him from the rest of the world.

 

He agrees to coach them both and immediately regrets it. If Yuri wins, just as he very well might, he’s going to be forced back to Russia. 

 

He regrets getting Yuuri into shape as well. 

 

If he’d thought Yuuri was tempting before, now he’s downright sinful. Glorious high cheekbones, chiselled jaw, collar bones that scream at Victor to sink his teeth into them just so he can show the world that he controls Yuuri’s everything. His thighs are thin but inviting and Victor just can’t seem to keep his hands to himself. He’s constantly touching, watching as a pale pink settles on those gorgeous cheeks. 

 

It’s a bad decision to give Yuuri the eros program. 

 

The hole which Yuuri begun to tear into Victor’s heart has widened every time he’s watched him skate to Eros, striking him each time with his ability to mould the music to him. Yuuri forces the music to match his love, to match his feelings rather than forcing himself to match the music and it’s stunning. Yuuri slowly but surely becomes Victor’s personal eros, down to the food that he has come to crave above all others. 

 

He doesn’t mean to almost kiss Yuuri when he shows cracks in his confidence but he’s so drawn to the boy. Wants to stop his tears but has no clue how. 

 

Victor would never tell anyone, but the only reason he forces Yuuri to go to the waterfall with Yuri is so that he has an excuse to see him soaked through, teasing with hints of skin through the white material. It’s worth the trip though. Yuri finds his agape and Victor gets to see Yuuri in a new way. 

 

He doesn’t mean to go drinking for so long on the second last night before the competition. He’d honestly just gone out to have some ramen on the recommendation of Minako. He’d figured a few drinks wouldn’t hurt. Supposed that maybe a few more than a few would help him forget the memory of what it was like to have Yuuri’s breath panting softly over his saliva moistened lips. 

 

He’s okay with liking boys. He’s known he likes them for a while. 

 

It’s just this is beginning to feel like a lot more than the eros that he’s been preaching to Yuuri and for the first time in his life Victor is beginning to feel genuinely scared. 

 

Yuri confronts him about on the night when Yuuri has disappeared off somewhere. Victor thinks he’s probably training by himself again. It wouldn’t surprise him. Yuuri is notoriously anxious about things like this. He thinks that maybe he should run off after him like he did the first time this happened, but he’s too scared to. Scared that seeing Yuuri skating or dancing will tear through the last few stitches holding his heart together and fill him to the brim with a type of love he himself is barely beginning to understand. 

 

“You like the Japanese Piggy.” it’s blunt and in Russian, stopping Victor’s breath in his chest. 

 

“I want to fuck him. It’s different.” he mutters back, despite the fact that no one in the onsen besides him will understand what he is saying.

 

“I’ve known you for years. I might be fifteen, but I’ve seen you with your flings for the entire time I’ve been skating.” Yuri replies in a slightly raised voice and Victor wants to cower. Even kittens have claws and Yuri’s are much, much sharper than he expected 

 

“Then you should know that I don’t get with boys. I fuck them and move on.” He whispers back and Yuri makes a disgruntled noise as he rifles through more of the costumes.  

 

“You aren’t in Russia. It doesn’t matter if you’re with a boy in Japan.” he pauses and Victor opens his mouth to speak, but Yuri goes on “everyone knows you’re kind of an airhead, but I can’t believe the same guy preaching to me about unconditional love can’t even see that he’s in love with someone.” he walks out with a costume in his hand and Victor doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling on the floor.

 

* * *

 

The competition turns out how Victor expects it to. Asking a fifteen year old to express unconditional love while carrying out a routine that most seasoned skaters would find difficult is like telling someone with no training to climb Mount Everest. Yuuri, despite his falls, is stunning. He is pure eros, driving into Victor’s most carnal urges to destroy him. He looks delicious, more so than the katsudon which Victor has come to associate with him and with his new found self in Japan. Victor can see the delicacy in which he moves, the feminine ‘je nois sais quoi’ that makes Victor ache with want. 

  
  


Yuri abandons the competition and Victor can’t find it within himself to care. Yuuri won by a landslide anyway. The smile on Yuuri’s face cause joy to swell in Victor until it explodes onto his face and into the slide of his hand onto Yuuri’s arm. The boy is so pliant, no longer afraid of his affections, but desperate for more of them and Victor almost regrets awakening his sexuality. He can recognise vestiges of his younger self in Yuuri. Can see the passion and determination to prove himself to as many people as possible. 

 

Victor isn’t sure what the feeling swelling up in the bottom of his stomach is. It feels similar to dread, but it doesn’t bring an ominous tint to any of the events that are occurring. Instead it seems to bring about a sparkle to them. Makes Victor want to store them in his memory as perfectly as possible, because he isn’t sure how long he will have with Yuuri before the boy works out that he isn’t as marvellous as he believes he is. In that moment, standing with Yuuri on the podium, he finds that he’s finally found a moment worth protecting in his somewhat terrible memory and his chest tightens with unfamiliar emotions. 

 

He was sure that this started out as a way for him to continue living his dreams despite his diminishing physical abilities. It was meant to be a way to continue his time in the limelight. A way to shock the world. It wasn’t meant to lead to any feelings. Wasn’t meant to give him heart palpitations that felt as though they were a heart attack. Wasn’t meant to make him begin to feel things about the boy he was so prepared to use for his own goals. 

 

So that night, Victor does what he does best when he thinks boys are attractive. 

 

He fucks Yuuri, slow and hard. They go at it until late in the night, with Yuuri perched in his lap, panting soft breaths into his ear. Yuuri is pliant, bending his body to to Victor’s demands. They go until each thrust has Yuuri whimpering at the combination of pain and pleasure that comes with every twist of Victor’s wrist and with every rub against the gland inside of him. Yuuri isn’t as inexperienced as he seems, sucking down Victor’s cock and whispering to him about all the things he’d done in secrecy while in Detroit with boys who were more than willing to teach him dirty little tricks. 

 

When they finally finish, Victor can barely keep his eyes open. He pulls Yuuri into his arms, because Maccachin had chosen to lay in Yuuri’s bed and he can’t sleep without something in his arms. The honest side of himself that has been revived briefly by the rush of endorphins and adrenaline whispers that he’s only embracing the boy because it’s Yuuri, but he’s long learnt to repress its opinions.

 

When sleep finally begins to drown him completely his last, recurring thought is a prayer that whatever it is he feels for Yuuri is out of his system.

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up, Yuuri is gone and his chest feels empty. 

 

He can hear Yuri’s parting words to him on a loop, pestering him and making him feel flustered. The desire to be near Yuuri, to hold him close and never let him go hasn’t dissipated. If anything, it’s gotten more immense. He wants to watch as Yuuri skates by himself. Wants to hold him close for hours and never let him go. It’s such a foreign feeling to him. It’s terrifying. 

 

Victor loves surprises. Loves the unfamiliar. New territory.

 

For the first time in his life, the idea of something new is terrifying. 

 

He wants to call his mother. Wants to ask her for advice, because everything seems to be going wrong at the moment. He wants to hear the familiar tones of Russian in her voice. The phone is in his hands, the numbers pressed in and his finger hovering over the dial key before he remembers that he can’t call. Not because of timezones, although that is also a factor, but because he doesn’t have a mother any more. Hasn’t had one since she walked in on him with a boy from his high school, hands in each other’s pants with their lips pressed together. She’d kicked him out and luckily he’d been able to convince Yakov to let him dorm with the foreign skaters who came to Russia to train under him. 

 

He wonders if Yuuri’s mother would be willing to listen to him. He toys with the idea for as he pulls on clothes appropriate to help Yuuri go through the basics so that they can begin to work on possible free programs. It might help with how he’s feeling, but Yuuri’s mother only understands very basic English and his Japanese is rudimentary at best so in the end it probably won’t work. 

 

He decides that he’ll call Christophe later that night. He wants to call him now, but it’s some ridiculous time in the morning in Switzerland and he will either get no response, or a response filled with filthy sounds that he does not want to hear. So he goes to the rink and works through the basics, starting with the quads which Yuuri failed to land in the hot spring on ice competition and then working through some of the finer details in the jumps and spins which he does land. He tells him to watch his free leg, to pull from his core, to watch his timing while standing on the sidelines and admiring the boy’s beauty as he moves on the ice. 

 

The boost of confidence from the win and possibly from their shared night together has done wonders for Yuuri and Victor can feel his stomach tightening with tendrils of arousal. He wants to fuck Yuuri again. He thinks it would be nice if Yuuri would wear one of his sweaters, so he could watch it slip over the boy’s delicate shoulder and he slowly moved his hips, eyes half closed with pleasure and exhaustion. He wants to twist his fingers into the darkness of Yuuri’s locks. Want to kiss him until his lips are red and gleaming. Wants to bite down on his neck so that there is no doubt that Yuuri is taken . 

 

He supposes that in teaching eros, he’d fallen into it with Yuuri. Like most things, it is likely to be a passing fascination. An obsession with a newly understood concept that drive him insane for a week or two before he once again becomes bored. 

 

It’s been far over a week and he is still intrigued by Yuuri. He wants to know more and more. Wants to find out everything that makes Yuuri blush. Wants to know what makes Yuuri happy. What makes him sad. What makes him anxious. He wants to understand everything about Yuuri and it scares him.  

 

He decides to go out for dinner that night, more as an excuse to call Christophe without the chance of Yuuri understanding than because he wants to try different food. He starts the call the moment he’s sure he’s out of earshot. 

 

“Victor?” Christophe sounds startled and Victor can’t blame him. It’s been years since Victor has initiated contact between them. It’s nearly always been Christophe chasing after him, trying to get his attention. 

 

“Have you ever fallen in love?” He asks quickly, because he can’t deal with the pressure building up in his chest from how many times he’s asked himself the question. 

 

“Yeah. A couple of times. Why?” It catches Victor off guard. He’d always assumed Christophe was like him with a string of constant flings and no feelings for anyone. 

 

“How did it feel? How did you know it wasn’t just lust?” Christophe hums on the other side of the phone and Victor begins to walk a little faster. His stomach is twisting in so many knots that he is no longer hungry. 

 

“It’s hard to explain. Honestly I felt the same way as I did when I stepped on the ice. I wanted to be with them for hours. I wanted to know what they were doing all the time. It’s a difficult feeling to explain. I just…. I felt warm when I was around them.” Victor’s breath catches in his throat. “Victor, who are you in love with?” Christophe asks, but he can’t find the words to reply. Eventually he hangs up with shaking fingers and heads over to the ice skating rink, glad that he thought to grab his skates before he left. 

 

When he sneaks in late that night after skating through the program for agape there’s a notification on his phone. 

 

From: Yurio

Hey Vitya. You forced me to learn what agape is, but I wonder, do you understand it?


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor struggles to understand the concept of agape. 
> 
> Perhaps asking a 15 year old to understand such a complex emotion was a little much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just quickly, this is unedited! I'll be editing it soon, but I really wanted to finally post the second chapter!  
> also I got a twitter account to communicate with you all so you can follow it here: https://twitter.com/DawnMalfoy (@DawnMalfoy) 
> 
> I'll be more active when I get some followers to talk to!

Trying to get Yuuri to be more confident in himself is more of an uphill battle than Victor anticipated. He’d thought, rather vainly he supposed, that his mere presence and desire to be the boy’s coach would be more that enough to encourage him to believe in his ability to skate. After all, he’d given up the world’s best skating career to coach him. If that didn’t tell Yuuri that he was a good skater, then Victor isn’t quite sure what is. 

 

The problem of increasing Yuuri’s confidence in himself plagues him almost as much as Christophe’s parting words to him and Yuri’s text, although he’s fairly certain that it has a much easier solution than his own issue. The confidence boost that Yuuri got from his victory over Yurio fades quickly, his eros doesn’t lower, it only ever grows, but it grows into a different form again. Gone is the erotic Yuuri with tricks that can have him gasping in seconds. Suddenly Yuuri possesses a shy innocence that makes him want to hold him close and take him slowly so that he knows he won’t hurt him.  

  
  


He worries over it for hours that turn into days that slowly turn into weeks. He tries everything he can think of to clear his mind from it for a moment, so that he can try to slowly unravel the threads of his thoughts without becoming more tangled. He’s determined that a lot of the issue is his own lack of confidence as a coach. In trying to stay in the spotlight and in trying to shock absolutely everyone he royally fucked up. He wants to talk to Yakov, but he can’t and he wants to punch himself, because as much as he is enchanted by Yuuri he isn’t so sure that’s it’s worth the estrangement from the man who had been his father figure for so many years. 

 

He tries to gently encourage Yuuri, then he tries his former coach’s method of pushing against the younger skater’s limits until he feels encouraged to prove him wrong. He tries to leave Yuuri to his own extremely dedicated devices and then he tries to monitor him as though he is a helicopter parent. Eventually he just settles into what he’s best at. He flirts gently, trying to use his flirtation as positive reinforcement so that Yuuri will crave his touch. 

 

Internally, the manipulative side of him that he tried to abandon in his old apartment in St Petersburg says that if he keeps going he’ll be able to get Yuuri to do whatever he wants. He tries to shove it down inside himself. Tries to remind himself that he can’t be entirely selfish anymore, because this isn’t just his life he’s playing with. Yuuri is twenty three. If he’s luckier than Victor he might have another seven years of competitive skating left in him. If he’s less lucky than Victor this season may end up being his last. It’s not a matter of wanting to shock the world anymore. It’s a matter of being a good person and respecting the person he is training. 

 

The full extent of the revelation hits him early in the morning, when he’s snuck into the hot springs to bathe under the stars in the hopes that it will relax him enough to sleep. He’s slept with Yuuri, flirted with him, forced the title of coach on himself and imposed himself on his home but he doesn’t know Yuuri. 

 

It keeps him awake all night,  thoughts racing. He’s messing with someone else’s entire life, but he doesn’t even know what that person wants from him. 

 

Victor very rarely feels guilty. That night though, it wracks through him until he has to stumble to the bathroom and cling to the bowl of the toilet as the dinner that Yuuri’s mother cooked for him makes it’s way out of his stomach. 

 

* * *

 

 

The training program which Victor establishes for Yuuri is rigorous, involving early mornings, late nights and weighing food down to the last tenth of a gram. It’s a professional athlete’s regime, one which neither of them are unfamiliar with, but one that means he doesn’t really have time to get to know his protege to the level which he needs to in order to be able to choreograph him a free program. The night where he realised that he barely knows what their relationship is plays itself over and over again in his head, demanding and answer. 

 

He tries to think of it on his own. Yakov was his father figure, because Victor didn’t have a father after the incident. He was strict but in his own unique way loving. His heart aches for a moment and he wonders if he, like the prodigal son could return to Yakov and be welcomed into open arms. He could return to Russia and compete as an ice skater and escape whatever it is that Yuuri Katsuki is doing to him. 

They’re fleeting thoughts though. He can’t return to that anymore. Can’t return to being Victor Nikiforov, Russia’s treasure, the leading ice skater in the world. He gave that up and as much as he hates it he has to keep going with whatever it is he started. The selfish part of him demands it, because it wouldn’t be shocking to see him crawl back to Russia, but it would be shocking to see him keep coaching Yuuri until he was at the top of the world stage. 

 

Still, as calm as he tries to be while honing his coaching skills, even Victor is human and the ever decreasing time between the present and the Cup of China is making him extremely concerned. Good routines often takes several months to rehearse and perfect and they’re very close to hitting the point of no return. He tries to find music which will suit Yuuri. Stays up with his phone in his hand and lists of songs that he’s been recommended or heard in passing. He can’t seem to find one for Yuuri though. It hurts to realise once again that he is failing as a coach. Each wrong song rubs salt into the deep cuts of the realisation that he is not ever going to be naturally perfect at coaching. It makes his chest tight with hurt at realising that he doesn’t know Yuuri well enough to know if he’s making the right call on the songs. 

  
  


He doesn’t want to have to turn to Yuuri for help. He may be inexperienced but even he can see that the boy under his tutelage is incredibly shy and anxious about everything to do with his skating career. Eventually though his frustration and distress reach boiling point and he can’t help but ask Yuuri about his free program as they emerge from their warm down in the hot springs. It ends up with a call to his former coach, one that sends pangs through his chest as he notices the easy way in which Yuuri discusses what is occurring with his life and training. He wants to have the relaxed feeling in his coach student relationship that they seem to have. Wants it so badly that it aches. 

 

When he finds out from Celestino why Yuuri has never chosen his own music his heart aches for the boy. It’s not as though he hadn’t tried. He just wasn’t confident enough to push through with the music he thought suited him. 

 

So the next day, instead of forcing Yuuri to skate the eros routine for what feels like the millionth time and instead of practicing his still slightly sloppy quads Victor tells him to put on something warm and walk to the beach with him. Yuuri’s shock is palpable and Victor’s heart soars at the idea of having surprised him. It’s nice to know that Yuuri is also still struggling to get to know him. It feels nice to know that the he’s making an effort to get to know the Victor that isn’t the idol he looked up to for so many years. It’s nice to feel as though someone is finally beginning to understand the real Victor. 

 

There’s a part of him that is scared of Yuuri completely uncovering his true self as well. A part that forces him to replay all the selfish decisions that have led him to this point. A side of himself that forces Yuri’s question to the forefront of his mind and that forces him to search desperately for the Agape that he was so desperate to teach.  

 

They sit together, side by side and Victor’s chest feels as though it is about to burst open from the ache building up in it. Yuuri’s hand is resting beside his, close enough that he can feel it’s warmth radiating to his hand, but far enough that grabbing it would involve a noticeably large movement. For the first time, Victor doesn’t want to shock him. Doesn’t want to surprise him by twining their fingers together, or tease him by calling him his pork katsudon. He just wants to sit in the moment, listening to the seagulls that remind him of his abandoned homeland and being Yuuri in a beautiful silence. 

 

His heart feels warm when he turns to look at Yuuri’s serene, slightly smiling face. He wants to keep that expression on his face and feels as though he would do anything to make it so, even if that means upping and leaving back to the country that had so long treated him as an idol rather than a person. He wonders if this is what it feels like to love someone unconditionally. If this is what they claim mother’s feel when looking upon their child for the first time in the blurry black and grey of a sonogram. If this is what the grooms who look so besotted feel as they watch their brides glide down the aisle towards them. 

 

He wonders if perhaps this is what agape feels like, but then pushes the thought to the side. Agape is meant to be all encompassing. A feeling of such complete devotion that the Greeks use it to describe the devotions of the faithful to their gods. 

 

“Yuuri, what do you want me to be to you?” 

 

Somewhere deep within himself Victor prays that the answer is something romantic. He wants to hear Yuuri shyly stutter out that he wants him to be his lover, his partner, his forever, because Victor has finally, ever so slowly admitted to himself that he wants those things from Yuuri. He waits for a few tense moments, heart pounding in his chest in the way that only skating and Yuuri seem to be able to make it to. 

 

“Do you want me to be a father figure?” 

 

“No.”

 

He lets out a soft sigh of relief, because as much as he would appreciate any type of love from Yuuri, the love of a child to father may just be unbearable to him. Particularly considering that up until he met Yuuri’s father, he had no decent parental role model to follow. He can’t be that for Yuuri, but he also doesn’t want to admit that he can’t, because he is vain and selfish and wants Yuuri to keep believing that he is perfect. 

 

“Your friend?” 

 

“No” 

 

This one breaks his heart a little. He doesn’t think that Yuuri feels much affection for him beyond the platonic. The night they shared together is easily written off as being the result of adrenaline highs and alcohol induced lows slurring together into a drunken night together. Once in high school one of his friends had confessed to being in love with another boy in their grade, who was dating someone else. When Victor had asked why he continued to stay by the boy’s side and why he didn’t selfishly try to pry him away and keep him to himself. At the time he’d scoffed when the boy said he’d rather be close to the person he loved than lose them altogether because of their selfish desires.  Now he thinks he understands. He wants Yuuri to think of him as a friend at least. Wants to know that the boy enjoys his company. Wants to know that he gets to enjoy seeing Yuuri when he is happy and sad and wants to know that he can spend time with him because they care about each other. 

  
  


“Ah, then maybe you want me to be your boyfriend?” he prays that Yuuri doesn’t hear the hope in his voice when he asks this particular question, because Victor isn’t quite sure how to respond to any questions that Yuuri may have about it. Sure he cares for the boy in a way that he is entirely new to, but he isn’t ready to try and explain that to his floundering protege, who is struggling to simply find his own skating style. The burden of Victor’s confusion would be too much for him. Would break his wings before he even got the chance to begin to hover a little above the ground, let alone soar. 

 

Yuuri leaps up into the air while screaming a negative response and Victor tries to pretend that there isn’t any tears beginning to try and fight there way to pool in his lower eyelid. He feels utterly despondent. A failure at determining what it is the Yuuri wants from him as a person. The gulls call in above him in their hoarse voices and the sky becomes a slightly darker grey that reminds him of the walks home from training in St Petersburg. He wants to pack his bags. Wants to fly home, possibly wants to take Yuuri with him. He wants to smell the familiar smokiness of salmon as it is preserved and taste the earthy depth of the dishes from his homeland. He wants to watch as Yuuri bites into a warm pirozhki, all adoring eyes and flushed cheeks just to see if he’ll like the taste of the food that Victor grew up on. 

 

He feels lost in this land full of strange words and people and weather and sounds. Feels lost now that he can confirm that he truly doesn’t understand the one real relationship he’s made in this foreign country. 

 

Victor is human, even if his fans, the press and often Yakov seem to forget that fact. 

 

So he breaks, just for a moment, but it’s long enough to change the slightly humourous air to one of tension. 

 

“So what do you want me to be to you Yuuri?” the words play over and over again in his mind, flying around so fast and crashing into the bones of his skull like bullets until he wants to curl up and scream. He wasn’t meant to show Yuuri that he was just as lost as the younger skater. Wasn’t meant to show him that he still didn’t understand what it was Yuuri wanted from him. That he still didn’t understand why the Japanese skater put himself through so much torture just to win a competition to get him to stay.

 

“I just want you to be you Victor! I don’t want you to be anything but yourself.” 

 

He thinks that he read about this somewhere. The feeling that falling in love moves slowly at first, trickling through your chest like molasses until it clings to every part of your chest cavity. Now he feels as though he can fully comprehend what it meant by falling slowly, then all at once. It feels like he’s suddenly hit the ground, smashed into it so hard that the impact has stolen his breath and filled his body with an ache that can seemingly only be cured by a boy whose idea of sensuality revolves around a katsudon. 

 

Yuuri is the first person to demand that he is himself after seeing a side of him that isn’t perfect. 

 

“Yuuri… have you ever been in love?” 

 

* * *

 

The conversation about what Yuuri expects of Victor changes their dynamic entirely. Victor is more confident in himself because he’s slipped up and let Yuuri see his isn’t as perfect as the world has tried to promote him as being. It’s nice to know that he can mess up slightly with his coaching and Yuuri won’t mind or be completely taken off guard. It makes their coaching sessions vastly more effective, with Victor being far more willing to try new techniques and Yuuri being slightly more willing to comment on when they work for him and when they don’t. 

 

The session on the beach also fuels Victor’s jealousy. Don’t get him wrong. He was so, so happy to hear Yuuri open up about his time in Detroit. Happy to sit and listen to him quietly explain about the singular time he had tried to have music produced for his free skate. He’d been entranced by a combination of avid interest in hearing about Yuuri’s past and the feeling of bitter jealousy that rode over him when Yuuri spoke so gently about the girl from the musical conservatory that produced the music for him. It makes him want to pull Yuuri to him and demand that he never contacts her again, just so he’ll be sure that he has all of Yuuri’s attention. 

 

He’s slowly discovering that his selfishness extends across to the love that he feels for Yuuri. He loves selfishly, possessively. He doesn’t want people to look at Yuuri, because Yuuri is his. He doesn’t want Yuuri’s attention to stray from him because he wants to keep all of Yuuri to himself. His affection, his attention, his idolisation. Victor wants to selfishly keep it all and he’s beginning to feel a little like the owner of a beautiful, rare bird who refuses to set it free to share it with the world. He wants Yuuri to stay within the confines that he’s creating. 

 

A tiny, but quickly growing part of himself wants to change that. Wants to love Yuuri in the way that he’d been told agape feels. Wants to love him so much that he’ll leave him free and simply stand by his side to keep him safe and help him shine. But Victor is only human and his faults don’t simple fade overnight because he wishes them too. 

 

So when Yuuri wakes him up in the middle of the night by straddling his lap while Victor tried to remain flaccid beneath him part of him wants to throw the laptop across the room, because playing through the nondescript headphones is evidence of yet another person who knows Yuuri so much better than he does. The music is perfect though, and he’s working on this whole being a good coach thing so instead he plasters a smile on his face so he can see Yuuri glow in his approval and nods to tell him that this is the song. 

 

He’s jealous that he wasn’t the one to find the perfect song for Yuuri, but when Yuuri slumps on top of him mouth slack and letting out a tiny trail of saliva onto his bare shoulder he can’t help but be pleased. Yuuri looks so content when he sleeps. Relaxed and free from the desperation for everyone’s approval that seems to constantly mar his face. Victor’s heart swells with the desire to put the expression onto Yuuri’s face while he is awake. It bursts open, floods warmth and cool through his chest all at once. He wants to make Yuuri feel content more desperately than he’d wanted his first Grand Prix title. More than he’d wanted to perfect landing the quadruple flip. 

 

He supposes, that in a small way, this is what agape feels like. 

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri blossoms with the music written specifically for him. He’s more vocal about the choreography of the program and Victor is certain that this song means more to him than he’s letting on. He wants to understand why Yuuri wants to make the routine so complicated and so filled with quads, but the more he pries the more Yuuri closes himself off again. So he tries to be patient. Lets Yuuri adjust the routine to his liking and helps him train so that he can land it perfectly every time. 

 

There still a feeling of bitter jealousy buried deep in his heart. It drives him to hold Yuuri close, press his hand to the small of his spine when they walk into a room together. Slide their thighs so close that they radiate heat to the other. It’s almost malevolent, the desire to touch and be close to Yuuri. It manifests itself in his dreams with him standing beside Yuuri, a guard to shield him from the world, a keeper to hide him from the world’s intense desires for him. 

 

Sometimes in his dreams he simply stands by the edge of the rink, watching Yuuri skate while guiding out those who dare to try and sneak peeks or who try to distract Yuuri from his path. He wakes from those dreams with a pounding in his chest and a desire to see Yuuri, to make sure that he is every bit as content skating in reality as he appears to be in Victor’s dreams.  

 

They say that time flies when one is having fun, but Victor isn’t sure whether being with Yuuri is pleasure or torment. Perhaps, it is a combination of both. It makes the time between Yuuri finding his music and, seemingly, his confidence disappear like sand in an hour glass, sliding through Victor’s fingers until suddenly they are at the qualifiers for the Japanese nationals. He’d tried so desperately to cling to it in the long hours during which he and Yuuri reclined together in the hot springs and during their long jogs together to help improve Yuuri’s cardiac fitness. He tried to treasure each moment, each fall and lift of Yuuri’s chest as he asked for the music to be restarted at a particular time. 

 

Whether it is due to pain or pleasure or Victor’s selfish desire to hold onto all of the moments he gets to enjoy with Yuuri, time has passed and now they are standing together with Yuuri in his old competition costume waiting nervously to compete. Victor can’t remember the days when he still felt nervous about getting on the ice. He is aware that they exist. There is no skater that is entirely confident in their abilities from the moment that they begin. It is just that it has been so long since he felt like that about anything that he’s able to recognise the emotions flitting across Yuuri’s face, but entirely unable to sympathise and as a result incapable of knowing how to alleviate his worries. It hurts him, to watch as Yuuri struggles with himself. He wants to see him smile the way he does when Victor says that his off ice warm up is over and he is allowed to go and practice on the rink. Wants to see him flush with embarrassment when he gets a sudden surge of confidence. 

 

The eros routine is still one of Victor’s favourites. He loved skating through it himself, even in it’s half completed phase. Loved the feeling of power that such raw sensuality granted to him. He wonders if Yuuri enjoys having that power as well. Wants to know if Yuuri understands just how appealing he is. It’s insane how much Yuuri’s impression of a katsudon appeals to him. Plain frustrating how he uses the slight softness of the stubborn last thin layer of fat padding his hips to make his body curve in a way that’s downright sinful. 

 

Victor wonders if Yuuri will let him sleep with him again after the event, shocking himself when he realises that he would be content to simply lie there with a sleeping Yuuri in his arms. 

 

He watches Yuuri carefully during the warm up. Not that he isn’t always watching Yuuri with care. Victor is constantly checking to make sure the boy is smiling. So of course he notices the moment that Yuuri tenses in the middle of the warm up. It plagues him, his mind rushing through all of the possible solutions and struggling to find a way to solve the issue at hand. If Yuuri is too tense, his jumps will fail because instead of ensuring that he makes proper contact with the ice and lifts from the core he will be forced to pull with his upper body. It’s a mistake that a lot of skaters make and Victor is no exception is the scars on his knees are any indication. 

 

When the warm up finishes and Yuuri skates towards him he is no closer to a solution than he was when Yuuri began to tense up. He berates himself, wants to slam his head against the barricade for not considering this sooner. He has known that Yuuri struggles with how anxious he becomes about skating in front of large crowds. He should have anticipated that he would be even more tense at his first event since his failures at the Japanese Nationals the Grand Prix Finals. Once again Victor is reminded of his failings in a way that makes him want to scream. Yuuri makes him feel insecure. Makes him nervous about making any kind of decision for fear that he will hurt the delicate Japanese boy. It doesn’t matter that he’d gone and put on a suit. Nor does it matter that he’d had a moment of impulsive bravado in front of the press. He is nervous about his debut as a coach to the boy who is known as Japan’s best ice skater. It is a first, and somewhere, something deep within him murmurs that it would like to experience many more firsts with Yuuri. 

 

There isn’t as much time as Victor would like before the short programs must begin, and he can only stall for so long. He already feels bad for asking Yuuri what he should say before he warms up. Feels worse for the fact that Yuuri hasn’t answered him. Yuuri pulls his water bottle to his lips and for the first time since he jumped on the plane to Japan Victor allows himself to act on impulse. 

 

“Turn around” he says before he can think about it. 

 

“Like this?” 

 

He can’t respond. He isn’t sure whether it is because of the feeling that swells through his chest when he sees the delicate skin peeking through the mesh of the costume, or simply because of the fact that Yuuri is near, but the words won’t leave his mouth. 

 

So he does the next best thing. 

 

He embraces Yuuri, eyes closed to the flashes of the cameras from across the ice. Once upon a time he would have been concerned about whether they were going off because he’d succeeded in shocking the world. Would have wondered about how to keep their interest. 

 

Now though, he was worried about getting the best performance possible out of his protege. He is determined to see Yuuri skate as the embodiment of pure eros that he has become to Victor. He hungers to see his desires drawn into the ice in the deep crevices made by Yuuri’s skates. He wants to show the world that Yuuri is eros embodied, then show them that they may be able to see eros, but never possess it, because Yuuri is his. 

 

He opens his eyes just wide enough to see the pale expanse of Yuuri’s neck and he’s glad that the solid barrier covers the lower half of his body. 

 

“Seduce me with all you have” he says. “If your performance can charm me then you can enthrall the entire audience. That’s what I always say in practice right?” 

 

Yuuri stutters out a cute little “h-hai” and Victor just wants to kiss him and hold him close until he believes in himself. 

 

The routine isn’t perfect. Artistically it’s stunning. Victor can feel the story coming through to him, feels the music bending as Yuuri moves. In that moment, he would do anything to see Yuuri continue to feel the way he appeared to on the ice. Graceful, regal, carefree. If keeping Yuuri that happy meant laying his life on the line, Victor would have done it in an instant. Yuuri was godlike on the ice. A figure that was so distant and unattainable, yet close and desiring to show him the light. Even with the step out of the salchow and the accidental double, the eros routine is so artistically perfect that Victor mourns having to lecture his pupil after the conclusion of the performance. 

 

When Yuuri’s face drops as he waves around his poodle tissue box and tries to tell him that it is important to lower the difficulty of his jumps in his free skate to focus on the performance, Victor feels as though he is committing a grave sin. The guilt eats up his insides, then settles on the outside of his skin like tar, hot and sticky, hardening until he has a hard time moving. He tries to smile for the camera, tries to hide what he thinks is a guilt ridden countenance behind flirtation and his tissue box. 

 

That night Victor can’t help but look over at Yuuri as he sleeps on the bed on the other side of the room. A beam of moonlight shines onto the boy’s face, and the feeling of wanting to give him the world swells in Victor, starting from his heart and then spreading outwards until it makes his toes curl. Yuuri looks ethereal and for a moment Victor feels the way he did when his parents used to take him to the old, gothic cathedrals of St Petersburg, filled with equal parts awe and terror and reverence. The feelings press all the air out of his chest. Makes it so he feels as though Yuuri is a god and he is a humble servant, willing to do anything to ensure his complete happiness. 

 

To: Yurio

I think that maybe I’m on my way to finding agape. Work hard little Russian Tiger.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


Victor has promised the crowd a personal best from Yuuri and now, watching the boy warming up with his earplugs in he is sure that he made the right promise. The boy looks focussed, determined to qualify and show the world that he is capable of being an amazing skater despite his anxiety about skating in front of others. Even if the scores don’t show a personal best on Yuuri’s part, the boy’s confidence before the performance does. 

 

Something is slightly disturbing him though. Yuuri is normally extremely kind, bordering on slightly too affectionate. Today though he is ignoring his obviously nervous juniors in favour of walking around the rink with determination in his eyes. It’s nice to see a different side of Yuuri, but the determination is causing his shoulders to curl inwards with how tense he is. This determination isn’t the result of confidence and Victor can’t quite put his finger on what’s causing it, but he knows he needs to do something to fix it. Any attempts to make jumps or neat spins will fail if he doesn’t release the tension from his upper body, because he will pull up instead of lifting his entire body weight from his core. They’ll need to train for this as well once this competition has finished, so that Yuuri himself will be able to correct it. 

 

It’s a technique which Victor has actively avoided, because he knows Yuuri well enough to understand that it won’t be the most effective technique. At this point though, he’s beginning to run out of options so he has to try it at least. Yuuri deserves his best efforts after everything the boy has put into training for this season. He steels himself as Yuuri slides past him off the ice. Tries to stop all of his resolve flying from his chest due to Yuuri’s mere presence. The new focus has mad Yuuri more godlike, made the mere metre between them feel like galaxies from where Victor is standing. He’s not sure Yuuri even hears what he says. 

 

“How can someone who can’t motivate others motivate himself?” Yuuri looks shocked and Victor wants to take his slightly chubby cheeks between his hands and tell him that this is all for his own good, but that would ruin the effect. Yuuri seems godlike, but he is like Icarus, a man with wings who is in danger of flying far too close to the sun. So Victor slams down Yuuri’s skate guards before he can become even more entranced. 

 

“I’m disappointed in you.” he turns sharply and walks away before the weight of what he has done can bare down on him. 

 

He remembers when he was young and going for his first reconciliation that his mother sat him down to have a lengthy conversation about the concept of sinning. He remembers the feeling of sickness that crawled up through him as she explained that a sin was any action against the word of God, or simply an action which would greatly displease him. He remembers her explaining the types of thoughts and actions that could be a sin. Remembers how anxious he was for his first repentance to clear him from the guilt he quickly became entangled in. 

 

It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt for many years. One he abandoned when he started to climb the ranks in ice skating. He’d become aloof then. Accepted that on the ice he was a God and on the ground an idol. Understood that his feelings towards the other beautiful men he skated with meant that at least in the views of many Russians and fellow devotees he could no longer be considered a member of the Church. He’d tried just once before to repent for the sin of liking boys. Just after his family had forced him out. He’d stumbled into the church before calling Yakov and asked the priest for audience., He hadn’t been released from the tumultuous guilt, but he felt better in some way for having tried. 

 

Yakov had told him to leave such outdated views behind, but Victor had always been someone who needed to devote himself to  _ something.  _ First it was God. Then it was skating. Now seemingly, it is Yuuri. 

 

The feeling of devotion to the boy in some ways feels more complete than any of his previous devotions. It feels as though he has finally learnt how to give all of himself to something bigger. Something beyond himself. He wonders if Yuuri will absolve him for the sin of having hurt him, because regardless of whether Yuuri places well because of it, he has shown both that he lacks understanding of Yuuri and that he is underdeveloped as a coach. The sticky feeling of guilt builds in his chest and he makes his steps just a little faster. 

 

When he sees Yuuri smack the boy whose name he has (slightly hypocritically) neglected to remember on the derriere, he is reassured that his actions while being wrong in mode, have ultimately led to the right outcome. His mother had told him that the right end does not justify immoral means, but for now, what matters most in appeasing Yuuri is ensuring he gets results that will make him more confident and content. So the tension in his chest eases a little and he moves to greet his protege as he prepares to step onto the ice. 

 

Victor isn’t entirely sure if it’s the right way to go about drawing out Yuuri’s true self, but he has to try at least. The free skate performance is nothing shocking if Yuuri isn’t in the right frame of mind, especially now that they’ve agreed to lower the difficulty level of the jumps. It’s part his desire to be a good coach and part his desire to touch Yuuri that makes him glide lip gloss onto the boy’s chapped lips. He watches as a delicate pink emerges on Yuuri’s cheeks. He wants to run this thumbs over the patches of coloured skin so he can watch as they flush a deeper red. 

 

Yuuri’s lips feel so nice against his index finger and he desires nothing more than to pull him close and kiss him until he’s stolen the breath from his lips. It would shock everyone. It’s an action that the old him would take. The him that had been completely selfish would have grabbed Yuuri and mashed their lips together with no thoughts of the consequences for the other. Now though, he simply lets his finger linger for a little longer than is appropriate while revelling in the shocked expression of one of the young Japanese skaters who seems to follow Yuuri constantly. 

 

Victor still doesn’t know the boy’s name, but it’s unimportant. He half revels in the understanding that someone else admires Yuuri while the other half of him demands that he touches Yuuri more to show that while it is okay to look, it will never be okay to touch. Thoughts like that make Victor aware of what Yakov meant when he called him a child. He still loves selfishly, like a small child with their favourite toy, who does their utmost to ensure that it is always within their sight and that the joy of playing with it is not shared with others.  

 

It’s not quite full blown agape he supposes. Although perhaps, true agape is beyond the limits of humans, who in their flawed ways will always love imperfectly. That is not to say incompletely, because there is no longer any part of Victor that is not in someway imbued with love for his katsudon, but in a flawed way because his expression of love is always so selfish. When he loved skating, he was determined to prove it by being the sole skater in the limelight. In loving Yuuri he is determined to be the only one in his sights. 

 

So when Yuuri skates, even though he somehow flies into a wall after one of his jumps appearing to break or at least severely maim his nose, and finally ends by pointing at him Victor’s love feels complete. It had started from the very beginning of the performance, his heart no longer racing, but thudding slowly in his chest. It’s a feeling with the same intensity as he remembers from his first step into the Church as a boy and with a familiar fierceness of the feeling of stepping onto the ice from the early days of his career. It has a new unfamiliar gentleness to it as well. It feels softer around the edges, more free to give, limitless as though suddenly every barrier he had set up had simply fallen away. 

 

With Yuuri pointing at him as he finishes his routine, then skating towards him to hug him, his world suddenly expands hurtling forwards at the speed of light before snapping back onto the singularity of Yuuri. Everything becomes clear, then not clear at all. He barely has the presence of mind to step to the side before his suit gets covered in the blood streaming from Yuuri’s nose. It is as though Yuuri shines, he draws him in but simultaneously repulses him due to the amount of awe he instills in him. His thoughts when Yuuri was on the ice were filled with the thoughts of the perfection of Yuuri and with sudden understanding of what the whole tale was about after Yuuri had whispered it to him in the preparation room. His love for Yuuri is flawed, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t agape. 

 

For the first time in his life Victor wants to accept someone into his world, flaws and all. Wants to show them every side of himself, not only the public approved sides. He wants Yuuri to know the side of him that likes to hide behind Maccachin and the side that likes to sit beneath the gently falling snow while listening to the side of his own thoughts without restriction. 

 

Yuuri ends up on a different train to him which is heading to Tokyo for a press conference with the skaters chosen to represent Japan for the upcoming season. Victor himself gets on a train and heads back to Hatsetsu, with a heartful of affection that seems to get on the train with Yuuri. He wishes he could go with Yuuri. Wishes that he could stand by his side and show the world his support of the boy, because now that affection feels limitless. Yuuri had demanded he stay in Hatsetsu though and Victor was so completely willing to do anything to make sure that the boy would remain happy that he instantly agreed. It’s familiar in many ways, this type of devotion, but somehow it’s entirely unfamiliar too. 

 

Somewhere he remembers reading that the things once familiar to us, made only slightly different are the things which evoke a sense of the uncanny. That is the feeling that washes over Victor as he sits in the dining room of the Yu-topia hot springs. Nothing has really changed. Yuuri’s parents are still being sweet to him, Mari is being distant but polite to him and the town’s people are continuing to fawn over them. His feelings haven’t changed anything for the people around him, but now the world seems to have shifted just slightly and Victor is thrown off centre in a not so unpleasant way. 

 

There’s excitement buzzing in the room when Yuuri is called forward to present his theme for the year. They’ve discussed it a little before, not in depth, but enough so that Victor understands that Yuuri’s theme for this year is love. It’s been enough to get them through so far, but Victor is hoping that the press conference will clear some things up for him so that he can be a better coach to the boy who has become the centre of his universe. He sits quietly as he hears the boy explain that he’s learnt this feeling by realising the support of his family around him. Listens as he explains the ambiguous feelings of love towards his family. Listens as he explains that he feels supported by the people around him this season and that it has helped him feel confident in his ability to win. 

 

Victor expects him to leave it at that. It’s enough to say that he has grown and learnt what love is. Victor understands the feeling of coming to understand love. After all it’s a journey he has undertaken recently. Yuuri doesn’t stop though. The people sitting with him in the hot springs all gasp as Yuuri begins to discuss Victor. Victor’s Japanese is terrible and is probably on par with the level of preschool children. Still he understands the word ‘ai’ and that it’s being said in relation to his name and his heart stops. 

 

Subtitles are added to the video quite quickly and it makes it’s way to Victor’s social media within hours.  Minako sensei is sitting with him in her small bar, talking to him in slow English, because Victor doesn’t always comprehend the foreign language so well when he’s inebriated. It is she who suggests that he watches the subtitled version of the video and who hands him a pair of headphones with a stern command to watch carefully. The video has Russian subtitles and he’s eternally grateful because he really can’t be bothered to struggle through reading English. 

 

He finishes watching and his heart swells when he hears that he is the first person that Yuuri wants to hold onto. It makes him feel treasured. No one has really wanted to hold onto Victor before. His parents were more than willing to send him away from them, even before he told them he was gay, they sent him off for a ridiculous amount of extracurricular activities and forced him to study in his room at all other times. They didn’t want to hear him and they didn’t want to see him. Even when he begun to climb the national ranks, they couldn’t have cared less. 

 

Yakov too had let him go far too easily as well. It wasn’t that he hadn’t asked him to stay. Yakov had told him constantly from the moment he’d announced his decision, but he’d been asking for him to stay and keep skating. He’d been asking for the skater to stay but he hadn’t been asking for Victor the person. 

 

It is the first time that someone has said that they want to hold onto him and meant that they wanted to hold onto him with all of his little flaws and quirks that make him into Victor. He wonders if he should tell Yuuri to call him Vitya. It’s been so long since he’d heard that name said with genuine affection and he wants to hear someone say it as though they feel honoured to say it. 

 

“Victor…” Minako is beginning to slur and Victor wonders how much alcohol they’ve had. The ballet teacher is by no means a lightweight (honestly, he’s partly certain that she is verging on functioning alcoholic if Yuuri’s mother’s claims are anything to go by) so if she is getting to the point of being incapable of correctly pronouncing words then Victor isn’t sure how it is that he’s fully conscious.

 

“Victor did you… did you know that in Japanese we have…. We have a lot… lotta words for lurveee….” she rests her head on her arms and looks over at him. They should probably head to bed soon if they want to have a chance of waking up tomorrow. Still she’s got his interest now. 

 

“No… I didn’t know.” he says quietly. 

 

“Ah… Vicchan…. Yuuri used the most special word for love today… It isn’t just romantic love…. Ai… it’s reealllyyy special… it’s more… more… consuming? Deep? Something like thaaatt…. I don’t really have an eng-english word for it… it can be used for” she pauses to hiccup and Victor smiles wryly. “For family and… and for… it’s for a very powerful form of love… Vicchan… so… so” she seems to be fumbling for words, falling into the alcohol’s numbing effects clearly beginning to take hold. “Vicchan… if… if you wanna mess with Yuuri… then please leave now before you hurt him more… he’s serious… serious about this and serious… serious about you…” her eyes slide shut and Victor sits in stunned silence, processing the words that had been spoken. 

 

When the English finally begins to make sense to him, his mouth drops open. 

 

While the Greek’s have agape, the Japanese have ai. 

 

Victor doesn’t sleep that night in favour of trying to comprehend how it could be that someone as godlike as Yuuri could feel something so immense for someone who was so painfully flawed. 

 

* * *

 

 

When Yuuri arrives in Hatsetsu after the press conference Victor isn’t able to get him by himself for over a day. His family hide him away at first, and with the hurried but slightly proud sound of the whispers he can guess what the conversation is. His heart aches as he remembers having a similar conversation with his parents, although in his case the pride was instead extreme disgust that hit his skin like bullets. He’s okay with Yuuri having to talk to his family first. Even in his selfish desire to keep Yuuri to himself he understands that the boy should be able to enjoy time with his family. Besides, he wouldn’t wish to deprive Yuuri of something he had dreamed of for so long. 

 

He begins to get a little frustrated when Minako steals him away under the guise of ballet practice and ends up keeping him until the sun has fallen far below the horizon. Victor’s heart is beating rapidly in his chest when he hears the rice paper door slide open, his fingers are shaking with anticipation. Yuuri catches sight of him and his eyes shoot wide, staring at him with longing. His heart races and he tries to run towards Yuuri. It’s a slow start, his socks slipping over the tatami mats and causing him to almost fall forwards. He can hear Yuuri giggling and see his arms extending to welcome him between them before suddenly Yuuri is whisked to the side and he is left standing, staring at the empty spot where Yuuri once was. 

 

“Yuu-chan! Let’s have a sleepover tonight! We have so much to talk about!” The voice is familiar. One that he hears each day when he is on the rink with Yuuri. He’s never found Yuuko to be annoying and other than his slight irritation at her inability to control her children’s slightly stalkerish behaviours he’s never really been mad at her before. As she pulls Yuuri out of the hot springs that night though with a promise to bring him back in time to begin his training schedule as normal, a large part of him wants to run after her and drag Yuuri back with him. He can’t explain it, but he feels as though with each moment that passes he is slowly losing his chance to discuss Yuuri’s confession with him and he’s terrified that such a chance may never come again. 

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuko has Yuuri at the rink for exactly when Victor arrives and his anger at her for taking Yuuri away from him drains when he sees the easy smile on the boy’s face. Yuuri had looked frantic when he’d returned from Tokyo. He’d seemed like he’d really wanted to say something and Victor had wanted to be the one to hear it. If the boy’s confession on live television was anything to go by, then he was ready to explain to Victor what it was he was feeling and Victor himself is ready to explain his own affections to Yuuri. 

 

When he pulls Yuuri into an embrace before he steps onto the ice, the tension between them is palpable. Yuuko seems to abandon the rink to escape from it. There is a sudden magnetism between them, pulling at Victor’s chest and making him desire to run to Yuuri and pull him close. He’s unable to take his eyes off Yuuri, even when his routine is completely subpar and if they amount of times that their eye meet is any indication Yuuri is experiencing the same sensation. It feels tense, but not in an awkward way and when Yuuri finishes their training on a performance of Eros that feels almost too sensual to be true Victor gives into his desires. 

 

There’s a feeling barbing him as he watches Yuuri bouncing in his lap. It’s not quite strong enough to detract from the pleasure, nor does it manage to pull his attention away from how beautiful Yuuri looks in the moonlight, with the making his beautifully pale skin glow. Despite their lewd actions, Victor isblown away with how other worldly Yuuri looks. His eyes are drawn to a drop of sweat that slides down from Yuuri’s temple and down the side of his neck. It catches the light and Victor’s breath catches in his chest, holding in the words that are so desperately trying to escape from his mouth. Yuuri moves desperately, with his fingers scrabbling for purchase on his chest. Yuuri’s nails are sharp and the cuts they are leaving begin to sting as sweat touches them. It doesn’t matter though. Part of Victors prays that one of the scratches scars, just so he can remember the events of the night when it ends. He doesn’t want the memories to ever fade, because a sinking part of him has the feeling that this may be the last time that Yuuri is intimate with him. 

 

The pleasure builds up in him, each of his muscles tensing until his toes curl and his breaths become laboured. He can feel the same process occurring in Yuuri, abdominal muscles tightening under his fingers until the boy spills over his fingers and onto his stomach. His face looks so pretty as all of the tension eases from his body, Yuuri becomes limp and even though he hasn’t orgasmed victor begins to remove himself because he doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable by fucking him when he’s over sensitive. He’s okay with it as well, because for the first time in his life the sex isn’t all about his own pleasure. 

 

It surprises him when Yuuri lazily wraps his fingers around his still erect member. He can feel the trembles from the adrenaline rush. Victor’s brain is in a muddle, struggling and failing to comprehend the english words spilling from Yuuri’s swollen lips. When he finally climaxes, his chest finally relaxes enough to let him say the words that have been trying to escape him for months. 

 

“I love you” 

 

His eyes slide shut in relief the moment he says it, but he is entirely uncertain what language he said it in. If Yuuri’s confuse look means anything, he guesses he must have said it in Russian. 

 

* * *

 

 

Victor wakes up alone, with aching legs and a stomach itching from the bodily fluids that have dried there. It’s a familiar situation. He is no stranger to one night stands. So he’s not sure why there is tears building. Is uncertain why he feels so exhausted that he can barely sit up. Doesn’t understand why he can’t breathe. Everything seemed to have been going so well.  He’d was okay with giving Yuuri all of his affection and receiving no affection at all in return. He was happy to take any of the affection which Yuuri was willing to give him.  

 

So he isn’t sure why he feels so desperate to wake up to Yuuri’s smiling face. 

 

“Victor? Are you up?” 

 

He doesn’t mean to fall out of the bed. He isn’t even sure how it happens. He’s normally a very coordinated person. Graceful even. It’s just that Yuuri has this way to make him feel so unlike himself, but at the same time, more like himself than he has ever felt before. 

 

“I’ll take that as a yes.” he’s blushing but he isn’t stuttering and Victor is enamoured all over again. Yuuri looks determine to say something and Victor is completely willing to listen to him. He wants to hear everything Yuuri has to say, whether it is what he wants to hear or not. Wants to know what Yuuri wants from him so that he can do it. The depth of the feelings has long stopped scaring him and even the prospect that Yuuri may be about to explain that their night together meant nothing brings him no concern. He still isn’t sure why tears are trailing down his cheeks, or why he feels like he can’t breathe when Yuuri frowns. He doesn’t understand why if his love is so complete he feels so desperate for Yuuri to return it. He isn’t concerned about Yuuri saying it meant nothing. It’s just that he so desperately wants Yuuri to love him back. 

 

“I… Victor… what… what does this all mean to you?” Yuuri sounds so desperate. Victor wants to explain but he’s not sure that he knows enough English to do so and even if he does, he isn’t entirely sure that Yuuri will understand it all. If he could explain in Russian it would be so much easier, but Yuuri’s Russian is much worse than his Japanese and it would be a disaster. 

 

“Um… words for this? Very complicated…” He cringes at his own lacking grammar and nerve thickened accent. “I… I love you…” he whispers, but if how Yuuri’s eyes widened was any indication then the boy heard his words. “I… ah English is so hard!” he exclaims and then slams his hand onto the blankets that fell down with him. “This… love… it doesn’t… love doesn’t…” he’s trying so hard to struggle for words but understanding is already beginning to dawn on Yuuri’s face. “Um… the best word… best word for it is… agape?”  he hates that he’s struggling so much in front of Yuuri, but English was never his strength in the first place and he’s barely been awake for ten minutes. Yuuri looks shocked at the words that fall from his mouth, and Victor can’t say that he himself isn’t shocked that he’s said them either. 

 

“Victor…” Yuuri takes a deep breath and clenches his fists. Victor wants to reach out to comfort him, but he’s petrified that any movement would break the moment. It has the feeling of the moments in Church where the light would shine perfectly through the stained glass windows, filling the Church with multicoloured lights that made Victor’s heart rejoice in their stunning beauty. It shares the feeling with the split second after perfectly completing a routine on the ice, the moment where the world is still before it explodes into the sound again. “Victor… aishiteru.” 

 

Victor’s mind rushes back to the alcohol faded memories where Minako had tried to explain to him the serious differences between suki and ai, but he finds he doesn’t need to try and translate their deep meaning into his own language because the look in Yuuri’s eyes tells him all he needs to know. He gets to his knees, but he can’t seem to get any further. He’s paralysed by Yuuri’s love. 

 

Yuuri stumbles down to his knees in front of him, and almost trips forwards as he shuffles forward through the sheets surrounding Victor. Their lips meet clumsily. It’s the messiest kiss that Victor has ever experienced, filled with saliva and with more than the occasional clashing of teeth from the more that slightly awkward angle.  He can taste both of their morning breaths but he doesn’t care, because he’s finally kissing Yuuri with full awareness that the boy has feelings for him too. It feels amazing and he can’t help but tangle his fingers into Yuuri’s hair. 

 

“ Люблю тебя всем сердцем, всей душою* ” he whispers and hopes that even though Yuuri is unlikely to understand it, that the sentiment will come across.

 

* * *

 

The thing about confessions is that while your own world seems to shift on it’s axis but nothing around you actually changes. It’s a mildly uncanny change, with familiar scenes feeling brighter and warmer, but having not changed at all. Nothing really changes between him and Yuuri either. Yuuri still has to train because the China Cup isn’t getting any further away just because they shared their feelings. Victor wants to take Yuuri on dates. Wants to show him off to the world but is aware as a somewhat mature adult that it isn’t possible yet. That even though loving Yuuri comes to him as easily as breathing the rest of the world will not find it so natural. 

 

He doesn’t want to clip Yuuri’s recently repaired wings. Doesn’t want to potentially damage his suddenly rising career. He saw what happened when the people who supposedly understood and loved him the most realised what he was. He doesn’t want Yuuri to lose the loving family he’s built up in Hasetsu just because he is selfish and wants to show off. 

 

So he settles for stolen moments deep in the night when every other sane person would be asleep. They haven’t slept together since that fateful night. Not because Victor doesn’t want to, but because he knows that he can’t afford to push Yuuri’s body past the limits that he’s already pushing. It would be entirely unfair to put all of Yuuri’s efforts to waste just because of his longing for the boy’s body. They settle into shy, gentle touches that are easily excused as being the result of a very close coach - protege bond and it’s throwing Victor for a loop because they mean so much but show so little. 

 

It’s something that you have to understand a grown up he supposes. You have to learn that just because you love someone with the entirety of your being doesn’t mean that everything else in the world is solved once they return your love. The date of the cup approaches and Victor can see Yuuri becoming more and more anxious about it. Victor isn’t sure how to empathise with the feeling, because he’d stopped feeling nervous about not winning after his third Junior Grand Prix Gold. 

 

Eventually the day when they have to fly to Beijing. A plane is by no means a private space, but Victor can’t help himself from leaning on Yuuri’s shoulder as he slips into a long needed sleep. He’s nervous about it. Doesn’t want to cope with the questions that are sure to follow if someone takes photos of them. He knows that it’s likely that there are skating fans on the plane with them who will take photos. Yuuri had told him that it was okay though. He’d even gone as far as inviting him to rest with him. 

 

So Victor casts aside his worries for the first time in what feels like an eternity and rests with his boyfriend. 

 

The word feels foreign to him. A label which they both agreed on silently at some point but had never had the opportunity to use because they’ve been trying so hard to be secretive. Just for the duration of the flight though he supposes that it will be okay to be selfish and display his love for Yuuri. 

 

* * *

 

 

China is interesting. He’s been there before, but that was with Yakov who insisted that simply being in another country didn’t warrant a variation in his strict diet plan, nor did it warrant any variation to his training program. So for the first time, Victor explores Beijing. He ensures that Yuuri still carries out his training routine but the boy can’t focus on the upcoming competition for too long at any one time or he begins to fail to land his jumps. So he forces Yuuri to come out and about with him, pushes him to go past his comfort zone and try new foods. 

 

He likes meeting Yuuri’s friends as well. The Thai boy, whose name he can never seem to pronounce correctly likes social media as much as Victor does and they bond over conversations about filters and lighting that make for the best instagram posts. He’s fairly certain that the boy is aware of the nature of his and  Yuuri’s relationship, but the boy is tactful enough not to comment.

 

So of course, when they run into each other as Victor and Yuuri are conversing over dinner about the finer details of Yuuri’s performance for the following day he invites Pitchit to come sit with them. Of course the boy then invites his coach along and Victor, who has always been a fan of the occasional drink ends up drinking a little too much. Alcohol has always done an efficient job of lowering or entirely removing his sense of inhibition, and so when he decides that the room is a little warm he begins to slide off his thick suit that had been making it so. 

 

It isn’t really his fault that two underage boys wonder in just as he gets to stripping off the clothing on his lower half and the photos that Phichit takes and posts. If anything, Yuuri’s fault for being so damn attractive all the time. It isn’t Victor’s fault that he is a mere mortal who can’t refuse the magnetism of Yuuri’s beautiful, flushed skin. So, photos that set tongues wagging are posted worldwide and as much as he wants to care the next morning Victor can’t help but be pleased that the world has seen how enamoured he is with his student. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

It isn’t that Victor doesn’t expect Yuuri to do well at the China Cup. Victor has complete faith that Yuuri will do brilliantly. It’s just that Yuuri is always so, so anxious and he doesn’t expect that he will be any more confident just because of his presence and because of his confession of love. Yuuri still looks every bit as timid (and adorable) as normal when Christophe comes over to flirt with him. Victor won’t lie either. The sight of his best friend’s hand gracing the derriere of his beloved makes jealousy boil deep within him. 

 

He doesn’t understand where Yuuri’s sudden focus comes from but he wants to, because it makes him look positively radiant. He looks glorious as he warms up and when Christophe approaches to interfere Victor can do nothing but hush him, because he is ravenous with the desire to drink in more of the suddenly confident Yuuri. 

 

The thing that he loves about Yuuri is that he never fails to surprise him. It’d been years since he’d been surprised by anything, but Yuuri has brought the joy of not knowing back into his life. He’s never sure how he’ll wake up, never sure how he’ll fall asleep. He’s never sure which version of the eros performance Yuuri is going to give, nor is he sure about which version of his free skate he will witness. So in a way he shouldn’t be surprised when Yuuri twines their fingers together and presses their foreheads together before stepping onto the ice. The performance astounds him though. It’s eros in a way that Yuuri has never performed it before. Victor can recognise the love in it. The selfish desire to own someone so that they can only see you. It doesn’t help that he knows, from his own words that Yuuri is performing to seduce him.  

 

Yuuri’s words act to force him to stare at him as he skates, not that he would ever have been able to look away. Yuuri is absolutely enthralling. Each landed jump is more surprising than the last. He’s so stunned at the end of the performance that he can barely think of where the kiss and cry is so that he can greet Yuuri. He’s sent into a state of overwhelmed euphoria when he is finally able to process Yuuri’s score. His protege, who had for so long been confined by his anxiety and nerves is beginning to blossom. 

 

For the first time in a long time, his over the top actions aren’t an act put on to make sure that sponsorship money kept rolling into his bank account. He makes a heart and Yuuri beams beside him, elated at the personal best that is being displayed on the small screen in front of them. There’s still another day of skating to go, but Victor shoves down his concern about the following day in favour of celebrating with Yuuri in the present. 

 

When Yuuri presses a shy kiss to his lips before leaving to his room for the night, Victor feels as though perhaps it is the strength of their love that has led to such a perfect performance. 

 

He falls asleep with his fingers pressed to his lips and thoughts of living with Yuuri in one off the beautiful, traditional Japanese houses that he has become so enchanted with.

 

 

* * *

 

The black bags under Yuuri’s eyes startle Victor out of his love induced revelry. He can’t help but instantly berate himself. Yuuri’s anxiety is not something new. It’s been present for as long as Victor has known Yuuri and probably for quite some time before then as well. So really he has no one to blame for the pure fear that is showing on Yuuri’s face right now but himself. He tries to give Yuuri a little while to snap himself out of it as he had done at the regional qualifiers. Tries giving Yuuri encouraging smiles and small touches that convey just how much he believes in him. It all fails though and with each passing moment he can see Yuuri becoming more and more distressed.

 

So, in true Victor style he does the first thing that comes to mind and drags Yuuri to his hotel room for a nap. He abhors lying, but he’s forced to lie about sleeping to the last minute before competitions just to try and make sure Yuuri actually naps. Truthfully, he fell asleep quite easily to the sound of Yuuri’s breathing and the warmth that he manages to radiate, even through the sheets. The plan was to stay awake and make sure that Yuuri got some sleep, but he’d always been prone to falling asleep at inopportune times. When he’s forcefully woken by the alarm that he’d set, Yuuri doesn’t look any better than he had when they’d laid down. 

 

There isn’t any time to try and get the boy any more rest though, so Victor gives in to the fact that he’ll just have to work with a sleep deprived, anxious Yuuri. It seems like it should be okay initially. That the nerves will spur Yuuri on, press him to do better than he could have without them. When Yuuri races around to turn off all the screens feeding through live video of each skater’s performance, he knows this is far beyond the levels of anxiety that he has dealt with before. Victor isn’t good with nervous people. He never got nervous, choosing to act on impulse before he could feel anything of the sort. The other members of the Russian team were similar. He wasn’t sure if they ever felt nervous, but they were so hardened by Yakov and Lilia’s training regime that even if they were, they would never dare to show it. 

 

Eventually he realises that he needs to get Yuuri away from all the other competitors. It’s frustrating that even in the carpark, there are speakers with commentary on how the other skaters are going. Victor wonders if he could discuss something with the organisers of the Rostelecom cup so that Yuuri can have a space away from all of the excitement and tension. It seems to help somewhat, being in the carpark but it isn’t enough to help him recover from his blunder at practice. 

 

Yakov’s words from a few days ago float through his head, and Victor is struck with sudden inspiration. He may be a second rate coach, but Yakov Feltsman is world class. It’s a technique which he’d always hated, but one that had always been incredibly effective. Skaters, like so many other artists, have hearts of glass that are easily shattered. In the right kind of skater however, reassembling the pieces of their broken hearts would fill them with motivation to prove to whoever had broken their delicate hearts that they were wrong. 

 

So in his desperation to help Yuuri win, he makes yet another stupid, impulsive decision. 

 

“Yuuri” he presses his palm to his forehead, trying to steal his determination for what he is about to do. 

 

“Huh?” he looks like a deer in the headlights. 

 

Victor is suddenly back in the hot springs where he offered to be Yuuri’s coach. 

 

It’s as though there is a second chance. To stop himself from being stupid. To look after Yuuri’s feelings. To do the right thing. 

 

He is Victor though. He is impulsive and flighty and beginning to learn that he never learns. 

 

“If you mess up this free skate and miss the podium…” he takes a deep breath. There’s still time to stop and back out of what he is about to do. “I’ll take responsibility by resigning as your coach.” 

 

He can see it in Yuuri’s eyes. The moment his heart shatters into a million tiny shards that cut at Victor’s chest as they explode. Victor wants to take it back the moment he says it. Yuuri cries. Asks why he’s trying to test him. So he tries to backtrack. Apologises sincerely for what feels like the first time in his life, but is cut off. 

“I’m used to being responsible for my own failures! But this time I’m nervous because my mistakes would reflect on you too!” 

 

Victor had thought he understood what agape was before. Thought that he had learnt everything about what it meant to love someone completely. In this moment though, the words from Yuuri’s mouth ring through his head like a bell, clearing his mind and forcing new understanding into it. It is as though he is having an epiphany. What he has felt until now was a mere reflection of true agape. It was still in a way the complete devotion he had spoken of, but it was a mere shadow of it. Yuuri’s words throw all of it’s brilliance into sharp relief. 

 

Agape is not just falling for someone so deeply that you will do anything to be near them or to see them smile. Agape is a love that runs so deep that you change your own actions so they reflect well on the other. An affection so complete that it over runs your whole body with a desire to do anything to make sure that others recognise the brilliance of the person you love. 

 

“I’ve been wondering if you secretly want to quit!” it hits Victor hard, because there had been so many times in the early days where he had considered it. Before he’d realised how important Yuuri is to him. He hadn’t realised that the younger skater had picked up on those emotions. 

 

Still it is without a second thought that he cocks his eyebrow and says “of course I don’t” 

 

“I KNOW!” the sobs get louder and Victor decides that it’s time for him to be honest with Yuuri. 

 

“I’m not very good with people crying in front of me. I’m not sure what I should do. Should I kiss you or something?” it feels good to be human. To admit that he is confused and lost and that he needs help understanding how to comfort Yuuri. 

 

“That’s not it. Just have more faith than I do that I’ll win! You don’t have to say anything! Just stand by me!” It’s the first time Yuuri has ever truly risen his voice towards him and Victor feels blessed that Yuuri feels so much for him. Yuuri has always been so polite and quiet. It is truly an amazing feeling to be trusted enough that Yuuri is willing to lay bare all his frustrations.

 

So when Yuuri taps his head in an expression of comfort, Victor takes pride in knowing that they both understand each other to a much deeper level now. They’re both shaken. Both nervous about what will happen when Yuuri steps onto the ice. The routine is far from perfect. There are moments where Victor wants to cry out for Yuuri to stop. Plenty of moments where he wants to cover his eyes in frustration at the failed jumps. More than that though he wants Yuuri to be able to feel his support from the sidelines. Wants Yuuri to know that to Victor he will always be the most beautiful person on the ice, even if his technical skills are still somewhat lacking. So he watches, alongside every other person in the arena, entranced as Yuuri performs a routine that even he would find incredibly challenging. 

 

When he successfully completes a quadruple flip, Victor knows that he has to show the world that such an amazing, surprising, beautiful person has stolen every scrap of love that he has in his aging and worn body. It doesn’t matter that his homeland may never let him cross the border again. Doesn’t matter that Yuuri is still shy about publicly displaying affection. For Victor everything in the universe has suddenly become a singularity in Yuuri. It doesn’t matter to him what anyone else could ever say. 

 

It doesn’t matter that Victor is flawed. Is no concern that he’s entirely human. 

 

When he jumps forward onto the ice, lips meeting Yuuri’s slightly dry ones all that matters is the boy’s fingers daintily wrapping around his back. He couldn’t care less about the crowds, nor about the results because Yuuri is smiling at him as though he is the sun, stars and moon all at once. 

 

“This was the only thing I could think of to surprise you more than you’ve surprised me” 

 

“Really?” 

 

Yuuri leans closer and Victor thinks he can finally understand what so many lovestruck people around him meant when they said that they felt as though their world contained only them and their beloved. Everything condenses down into Yuuri. All of his fears and love and passion placed into the boy in front of him who looks at him as though he is a living god. 

 

When they go to bed that night, they sleep in Victor’s hotel room. Yuuri borrows one of Victor’s shirts and it’s only slightly oversized on him owing more to the height difference than anything. There’s a silver medal sitting on the bedside table and Victor’s arms are filled with the warmth of a peacefully sleeping Yuuri. 

 

Before he closes his eyes, he presses a kiss to the boy’s forehead before grabbing for his phone. 

 

To: Yurio 

 

I found it. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Люблю тебя всем сердцем, всей душою = I love you with all my heart, with all my soul (apparently. I don't speak Russian, so if you do feel free to correct me!)
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> Author’s note:
> 
> I’m so, so sorry this took so long! I was away on vacation for a week and I was planning to finish and upload this sooner, but I got some really really good news that meant I was run off my feet for a week! I can’t share what that news was right now, but just know that if it wasn’t something super important I never would have taken this long.
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> 
> Any way currently this entire fic is 33 pages and entirely unedited. I’ll come back and edit it soon, but I wanted to upload as soon as possible.
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> 
> Thank you for all your support so far.
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> If you want to talk to me? Or see me post random stuff about my feelings / fandoms I’m in then you can follow my recently opened twitter account. I’ll start being active once I get some followers! You can follow me here: https://twitter.com/DawnMalfoy (@DawnMalfoy)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is going to go up to the kiss in episode seven and be split into two parts. I'm probably not going to be able to finish part two until I get home again, but even if episode eight is released I'm going to conclude with their sweet kiss, because this idea has been plaguing me for a while ahah


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